Dakota Beacon

Thursday, January 20, 2011

In the September/October issue of The Dakota Beacon I wrote a piece headed, “Electoral Rise of America’s Freedom Lovers” that examined the importance of the political party. The Party of the candidates for, and especially for, congress and the presidency. Somewhere in the past few years the politics of the two main parties changed, both gaining identification with the edges ( extremes, maybe) of their political philosophy and beliefs. The Democrat Party moved very decidedly leftward taking on the model of European Social Democrats as they expanded government to assume more “care-taking” of our everyday living. The Republican Party is said to have moved to the right and has become more conservative; this is arguable, but it is the view of much of the mainstream media who identify with and seem to agree with the leftward tilt of the Democrats. My point is that the two main parties are moving further apart in their political ideology, and I maintain that the Democrats have moved to the extreme left and have taken or forced many of their moderates into this far -left ideology. We can no longer depend upon elected senators such as Conrad or Dorgan to hold the middle ground against this left-leaning Party; the same goes for Rep. Pomeroy who was unable to hold his North Dakota values in the face of pressure from Speaker Pelosi. Yes, I know all three are Democrats, but there was a time when common sense prevailed in the face of legislation, and congresspersons knew when that time was at hand, and they voted legislation based upon the best interests of the country. Am I wrong? Was there a time such as this? The past four years, and especially these last two years, have been a hard time and a learning time for those of us who believe in limited government and a free enterprise system. We have seen a Senate dominated by the Democrat Party and led by the hard-left Majority Leader Harry Reid go to extremes that are unequaled in recent memory; two Decembers in a row, 2009 and 2010, the senate has run end-of-the-year sessions into late night and weekends and holidays to pass legislation that is massive and controversial. The House, led by equally far-left Speaker Pelosi, has been the source of the big government (socialistic) bills, and they have enabled the senate, as the senate has enabled them, to ram through social programs that appear to be fiscally unsustainable.

We now know where the two Parties are at in their governing and legislating approaches. Our elections have become less of a choice between candidates and have become a choice of Parties. We cannot depend upon the person or persons running for office to use their common sense and good judgment on legislation that comes before congress--they have become pawns of their leadership and face tremendous pressure to vote the Party line. We can no longer “vote for the person rather than the Party” as many people tell us they do; as we have seen this leads us to the disasters of Obama-care, unending bail-outs, growing government, and out of control spending. Our treasury is nearly 14 trillion dollars in the red and the spending , the earmarks, and the new social programs just keep coming--the majority Party of Democrats with President Obama leading them on just keep rolling!

The Party of Spenders must be repudiated. We now realize there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat. The American people said NO to this left-wing bunch in November, but it appears the message was not loud or clear enough. Our next chance is 2012 to turn this bunch out. They will not stop their social activism and social engineering until they are reduced to impotency. Or perhaps more fitting: They shall be reduced to the ash heap of history, to paraphrase a quote from President Ronald Reagan.

Hal is a ND native who grew up near McClusky. A Korean war veteran who served in the U.S. Navy from 1951 to 1955. Hal and his wife Lois have four children and eight grand children. Hal volunteers at the Bismarck Public Library doing book repair and restoration.